Okey dokey, installed new fuel filter, no go. Car still takes ages to fire after cranking. Checked voltage to Hall Effect sensor, between 4 and 5 volts, so that seems OK. Pickup in dizzy cleaned up as well as possible.

I will try and replace pickup. Do I need to take dizzy gear off shaft to do this. Just looking at it, it seems to bolt in easily from the top.

Thanks, Mike

EDIT: just been down to the auto elec. who put the Scantool on the car. There were some fault codes:

Hard code: 785 Canister purge sensor output

Others: 157 MAF sensor211: PIP signal412: High speed idle test failed

The MAF and PIP codes may have been generated while I was testing and unplugging sensors. MAF seems OK to me as generally car runs OK with decent fuel economy (plugs always look good) and no backfiring or popping through airbox.

Now the surprise. Once ECU was cleared with the Scantool, the car is running fine! I'll try to start it again when cold and we'll see how it goes.

Fuel filter!? what about the pump? but anyway it sounds like that aint the problem.You need to remove the dizzy gear yes...make sure you mark it's posi on the shaft.How did you test the PIP? You would have had to test it while it was still plugged in so I don't see how you would get a 211?I would clear the codes and retest but that EEC sounds dodgy if you say codes wouldn't work and now they will!?! What's the catch code?

Fuel filter!? what about the pump? but anyway it sounds like that aint the problem.You need to remove the dizzy gear yes...make sure you mark it's posi on the shaft.How did you test the PIP? You would have had to test it while it was still plugged in so I don't see how you would get a 211?I would clear the codes and retest but that EEC sounds dodgy if you say codes wouldn't work and now they will!?! What's the catch code?

Damn, car very hard to start again this morning, fired easily again leaving work tonight but coughed and spluttered on light throttle most of the way home. It's like it's running out of fuel, but give it a boot and it clears, quite violently. No pinging, backfiring through airbox or black smoke out the exhaust.

I do have a spare fuel pump and might consider fitting it, but the problem is so random, I'm not convinced it's fuel pressure yet. Regulator? Can the charcoal canister solenoid affect the car to this degree? It's always had a crappy idle. I checked PCV valve, it seems free and tight in manifold. Hoses are fairly new to manifold too.

I checked PIP voltage with multimeter, car cranking and got 4-5 volts on multimeter. The Scantool gave us the 211 code.

I tried the test light code method a few years ago, but not recently. It probably works, but could never get the ECU into whatever mode it needs to be in when setting base timing.

Not sure what a catch code is, mate, but I'm learning! I'm taking the car back in tomorrow to see what codes it has logged after clearing them on Monday and see where it's at.

How many kms has the car got? When my pump was dying, it would be harder for it to start but as it got warm it would be fine. Pump sounded different though. If you have one, it's not hard to replace anyway and will just eliminate that as a fault. For an item that costs $80 for every 100,000kms or so it should be a regular maintanence item.

Failing that, the chip does sound dodgy.

_________________

There are 10 types of people in this world.Those who know binary and those who don't.

If you undo the bracket that's holding your EEC in (below the passenger kick panel) you'll be able to find a sticker on it with a code such as 4DEG or another combination beginning in a number followed by 3 letters.

Hi guys, appreciate the suggestions. Took car back to auto elec this morning after a VERY hard time starting it. Same codes came up again, canister purge valve MAF and PIP. Car takes a solid 5 minutes of cranking to start, very annoying.

The code on the ECU is 4DED.

When cold it still splutters under light load, give it a boot and it clears and goes hard. It still seems like an electrical issue as it just cranks and cranks with no firing at all. Then the next time I start the car, it will fire without a problem, usually OK when warm.

MAF? Hall Effect pickup in dizzy? TFI is Bosch and less than a year old. The tacho flickering in time with the misfiring must indicate something as I'm sure it doesn't do that with a dud plug or lead.

As I suspected the PIP code came up again so there's your problem. Canp will not affect the engine running. Could also be the MAF but try running it without the MAF plugged in...it should go into MAF failure mode and run really rich but it should still run without missing...if it still misses;Change the Hall effect in your dizzy or just get another dizzy from somewhere.

G'day mate, I just had some success. I cleaned up the Hall Effect sensor with elec. contact cleaner (it didn't look dirty), cleaned and tightened the two connector wire to the coil and tapped the ECU. The car fired first time! I'm not sure which of these steps did the trick, but I'll let you know how it goes later on.

youv got a cracked sparkplug. Very easy to do and most electritions over look the fact your plugs could be cracked. I had this a while ago, same symptoms. I pulled out all plugs and couldnt see anything. I re-checked it another week later and found a nice hairline crack in cylinder 2 plug (it was so fine you can only see when you wiggle the plug). That was the culprit. Try getting some cheap bosch sparkplugs for $25 and change them over to see it clears. A cracked plug tends to work good when you give it a bootful, but runs like s**t just plotting about.

Aaaargh! The car wouldn't start again tonight from cold! Crank, crank, crank for about 5 minutes, a couple of little coughs and some overrunning on the seemingly flooded cylinders and eventually fires to a perfect idle, WTF?

On very light cruise, it seems OK. Under, say, 20-30% throttle and light load it coughs and splutters again, still breaking down a bit at full throttle.

Can someone explain the MAF for me? I understand it controls fuel mixture. Can it directly affect the spark, i.e. a fault will directly cut voltage to the coil/distributor/leads/plugs or only lean out/richen the mixture? Can a fault directly cut fuel to an injector?

EB-5LTR, I get what you are saying, but I have one month old plugs, pretty new leads and was very careful fitting them (done the cracked plug thing before ). I've even swapped around each lead with a new one to check them and no difference. When I got it started tonight, I checked for any arcing in the darkness- nothing. It was actually idling better than it normally does....

I might swap out the fuel pump this weekend and see how it goes, but when cranking it doesn't even attempt to spark the fuel.

What a pain. I felt your pain couple of months ago with an old EF i purchased from an old bloke. Prick didnt tell me it had this starting problem. Found out the hard way.In my case i tried another ECU, Smartlock bypass unit, New crank angle sensor and problem was still there. Only thing i didnt try was the coil pack. At the end i gave up and sold it and made a couple of hundred on top of what i paid for initially. Hope you sort it. Ran great when it did start. When it failled it had fuel but no spark.

Cleaning the hall effect won't help but it's possible the connections are dodgy....see if you can get another dizzy to try.The MAF plays a major part in load calculation so if it's faulty the EEC will go into MAF failure mode where it run very rich and base timing will be invoked but it shouldn't miss.

Is it right that you were saying you've been suffereing these problems for 7 or 8 years (not starting without throttle, etc)? Is that when you had the chip or flash done? If so, it sounds to me like you could possibly have a problem with the tune. I'm pretty vague on it now, but when I tuned my car, I had a problem when I went from cruising to applying a bit of throttle where it would cough and hesitate that turned out to be something to do with the transition from closed loop to open loop, I think. But if this hasn't been a problem the whole time, then it's probably not it. Maybe look around for another EEC that's compatible with your car to see if it helps.

Did you do as XR9UTE suggested and try running the car with the MAF unplugged? Was there a difference in the way it ran? Can you get hold of another MAF to try?

I know you said you changed the leads individually. I've done this before and not found the constant missing I've previously suffered. It wasn't until I changed all 4 on one side that it fixed the problem.

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